There is not a form of left-anarchism or revolutionary socialism which
states as its aim the strengthening of the state. This is a consistent
fallacy propogated against socialism, the aim of which, ultimately, is
the “withering away of the state”. The state is necessary, in the final
analysis, to maintain the status quo where there is inequality and class
division. So capitalism, despite everything the right-wing claim to
say about “big government” desperately needs the state and its various
institutions for its very survival. We see this in times of economic
crises, when private banks and corporations look to the state to save
them. We also see it most obviously through how the state maintains an
army and police whose force is used in the interests of expanding /
defending profit making markets and private property respectively. The
aim of many socialists (and not all socialists and anarchists agree with
each other on this) is to take control the state in order to use its
institutions to implement socialist law and as a necessary to
dismantling the state altogether. For a clear exposition on how
reformist socialists, revolutionary socialists and anarchists define the
state and its purpose etc., a good starting point is Lenin’s ‘State and
Revolution’ which was written during the Russian Revolution in 1917.
It’s freely available here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/
Due to the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests in recent weeks I have been watching old speeches by James Baldwin, reading letters by Martin Luther King, learning about Fred Hampton, I've begun reading a book by Angela Davis, I've read books and watched documentaries about Malcolm X, and I'm currently reading the excellent book How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America by Manning Marable; I've watched the documentaries 13th and LA 92 on Netflix; and, of course, I've seen the footage on social media of the BLM protesters, and the rather excellent journalism from Vice News (whose work must be the outstanding journalistic achievement to emerge from these protests). BLM activists have asked us (as non-blacks) to 'listen and learn', and I'm certainly doing my best in that regard. One thing I have learned was something that Malcolm X made so brilliantly clear, that capitalism has made Black Americans hate thems...
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